theirdeficitandwe cannot, the world will switch to euros. there is a tweet here -- guest: the cbo is supposed to be a political, but it cannot be too alarmist. if we go over the cliff, we are looking on january 1, some of this is already milton. about $600 million -- $650 billion in spending cuts and tax increases. that is about 4% of gdp. that is an enormous negative stimulus. a detraction from demand. that would surely be a deep recession. the cbo relies on simulation models that did not take into consideration investor sentiment, the reaction of consumers, and so forth that they wholly lose confidence in their government. if we go over the cliff and stay there, people will start to conclude that washington cannot manage its affairs. all bets are off on economic modeling. it is impossible to say what happened that other than it would be very negative. host: one piece that you actually did right has this headline -- take the idea of a recession next year. with the perspective of everything else going on, when a recession look like? guest: it depends on how we get there. if we have a fiscal c

, who are providing us also with the means to floatthedeficit. theseare the people providing a lot of our financing. well, at some point if this goes on long enough, they begin to think, hold it. >> who's writing a lot of our financing? >> mainly foreign governments as well as markets. holding on to treasuries and the rest. so the question, then, at some point do they go, hold it. if these guys aren't serious, why am i depending upon them so much? and the scariest single scenario is ultimately people start saying before i continue to float the united states, i want to get a slightly higher return to take -- in order to -- because of this risk. because of this uncertainty. that is the day the spiral begins because that's the day mr. bernanke and his colleagues have to think about raising rates in order to attract the necessary financing. we don't want to get there. and what's so scary about this twofer of the cliff and the debt ceiling over the next two months, basically till the end of february, is for the rest of the world looking at us, we essentially have -- it's not so much nex

solution that gets atourdeficitandreduce our debt everything has to be on the table and we'll deal with it. it's great to have rules. we just like to know what they are so we can make the right investments moving forward. >> even if it puts us in a climate of slow growth, even more slow growth than the economy which would be the kind of a climate where you as a ceo wouldn't want to invest in that anyway, you know what i mean? >> so i think a grand bargain won't create a slow economy. i think it will restore confidence and we'll all invest. we'll know what the rules are and the game plan is. weied be ready to move ahead. we have opportunities to grow all the way around the world. we need to know where to put our capital investment. if we know what the rules are, we'll invest. 60% to 65% of our costs are people and we put people back to work every day. >> you don't expect a grand bargain? >> no. >> meaning? >> a short-term fix and perhaps a recession. they talk about this bungee approach and i don't think that's helpful. let's take it away from american businesses and take it away fr

in infrastructure and dealing withthedeficitsweremore -- in a more balanced way. it was about what our obligations are to each other. it was about big things. those are very, very big things. i will say that, for all of the critique about whether our campaign was about big things or not, the preoccupations of people who write about that -- and i used to do that for a living -- i don't try to separate myself -- many of them are my best friends -- there is an awful lot of horse race coverage of this presidential race. there is such a preoccupation with who will win and who will lose and so little real interest in what the implications are. >> we were talking about pulling. >> public polling is so voluminous now. any to kids with an abacus can do a poll of the corner grocery store and some national news are in position will cover it as if it is news. and maybe the billion tommy pulled him out today. -- the billy and tommy poll came out today. it can be done sound yet they produce results that were wholly different than what we knew to be the case. yet it would drive coverage. the gallup p

run for years over a trilliondollardeficitsandit is time for us to do a big fiscal deal in washington that really drives down the trajectory of our debt. we have to do it. and then come in the senate, we have to get back to regular budgeting. i serve on the senate budget committee. since i have been! even before that, three years since we have any budget in t senate. -- since i have been there, even before that, three years since we have done a budget in the senate. >> new hampshire is a great model. >> absolutely. this to me is the number one overriding priority. and i want to be part of making sure that we finally start getting on the right fiscal track. it is not easy. but there is no easy answer to all of this. and programs like social security and medicare, we have to start talking about how we reform them. because, for example, medicare goes bankrupt in 2024. that is not that far off for people in this room who rely on it. or social security in 2033. we have to have those discussions right now to strethen america because nobody wants to see us see what happened ieu

to reducethedeficitandthen double it, do you think the american electorate was cognizant of the fact that obama doubled in it instead of cutting it in half? why don't the american people care about the debt of the united states of america? guest: i do think they care about it. the economy is the number-one issue. guess what? then it comes down to things like jobs. then you come to the debt. it is not that americans are out of touch with the idea that the government is spending more money than we are taking in. there is lots of concern about whether or not the chinese is holding our debt. so, americans are very concerned and that the question is how you go about addressing this problem -- are very concerned. the question is how you go about addressing this problem. president obama and the democrats are saying we have a combined problem both in terms of not sufficient taxation and also we have to have cuts in spending. we have to do the cuts in spending over time because you do not want to endanger a very fragile economy. to respond directly to your question, why do i think the elector